Labour takes Batley seat in by-election

Labour has regained a council seat in Batley seat in a byelection sparked after the previous member was expelled.

Habiban Zaman won the Batley East seat with 2,640 votes after former councillor Amanda Stubley was removed from Kirklees Council when she did not attend a meeting for six months.

Ms Stubley was elected as a Labour candidate but fell out with the party and became an independent following an altercation with far right activists in the run-up to the Batley and Spen by-election, caused by the murder of Jo Cox.

Coming in second was Conservative candidate Paul Young with 443 votes, followed by Liberal Democrat candidate John Robert Bloom with 136 votes, Local Independents – Heavy Woollen District candidate, Aleks Lukic with 140 votes, and Green Party candidate David Michael Smith with 70 votes.

Habiban Zaman, from Batley Carr, received a British Community Honours Award for her work regarding cohesion work in Kirklees in 2015.

For more than 25 years she has been instrumental in providing support to women across the whole region, setting up support groups and dealing with taboo subjects across different cultures.

She also received the BEM for services to women in a 2014 honours list.

Labour now has 33 seats on Kirklees Council, followed by the Conservatives with 20, the Liberal Democrats with nine, the Green Party with three and four members stand as independents. The Local Government Act 1972 states that if a sitting councillor fails to attend a local authority meeting for a period of six consecutive months then they cease to be a member of the authority unless an adequate reason is approved by the council.